Thursday, October 06, 2011

"Palace of Prep" lands in Georgetown

by contributor Brendan Kownacki

"It's almost more like the club house of an ivy league fraternity than a retail store" said one guest as she perused the monumental 20,000 square foot space of the new Brooks Brothers store on historic M Street in Georgetown.

The “palace of prep” as she called it, included a pool table and a patio for the undeniably buttoned-down crowd who toured and shopped the three floor titan with a portion of the proceeds from the event’s sales donated to The Trust for the National Mall, one of many non-profit organizations the retailer supports.

The first Brooks Brothers Store arrived in 1818 when Henry Sands Brooks opened H. & D.H. Brooks & Co. in New York City. According to their website heritage tab his guiding principle was "To make and deal only in merchandise of the finest quality, to sell it at a fair profit and to deal with people who seek and appreciate such merchandise."